XTC: Apple Venus Volume One : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

XTC couldn't go on strike for seven years and just come back to the same perky pop. To celebrate their twenty-first year of releasing tensely crafted, genre-busting gems, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding recorded a sampling of symphonic would-be show tunes. Apple Venus Volume 1 packs the wit and nerve that made their rock snap but does it with brass, acoustic guitars, violins, woodwinds and minimal percussion. (Volume 2, due out later this year, promises more wattage.) Those beloved Fab Four references still surface on Volume 1, but instead of evoking the Sixties, Partridge and Moulding suggest a timeless pastoral past rich with melody and subtlety.The protracted studio process nearly destroyed these New Wave graduates: Guitarist Dave Gregory left the band, and producer Haydn Bendall abandoned the sessions. Yet what remains ranks with XTC's best. A succinct, vitriolic spew aimed at Partridge's ex-wife, "Your Dictionary," in particular proves that Swindon, England's favorite sons can -- even without amplification -- sire more feisty allure than alt kids half their vintage. (RS 808)

BARRY WALTERS